The House That Was Suspiciously Cheap To Rent Considering Its Quality
by kiwkKat
Summary: A story of the weirdest romance ever. There's a suspicious, isolated, god-damn horror trope of a house, two dunkass saps who choose to reside in it without even having MET each other, bizarre ghosts choosing to HAUNT the place and thus fulfill it's creepy "this-is-totally-dangerous" status, and maybe a tomato plant.
1. You Know They Dead

**Prologue: **

It was night, and Calliope was painstakingly adding in some of the last details to her latest creation. Her joints were going white as she unthinkingly tightened her grip on the brush. It had to be perfect. It had been _specially commissioned_ by a darling Miss Lalonde. Besides which, the task simply refused to leave her mind until it was done! She was so fully immersed in her work that she could almost stop feeling her aches, and how her skin hugged her bones too tight for comfort. She didn't even notice the odd metallic smell that had wafted sneakily into the room, nor did she hear approaching painting was of deceased mother Rose Lalonde, and Calliope had high hopes for it.

The door to the cramped study flew open and smashed into the wall. It caused the pots of water to clatter and unsettled the framed artworks. Calliope dropped her paint brush unceremoniously on the floor, spinning to met the face of her twin brother despite the toll it took on her muscles. Her face became painted in horror at the sight of him standing there, just a few feet away and barely visible by candlelight. She raised her voice as loudly as it could go and hoped that it would carry through the thin walls.

"What in the _bloody hell _could have _possibly _possessed you to come here?!" she demanded, growing increasingly alarmed. She fumbled around, hands searching her study desk, gaze transfixed on the shadowed face of her all too familiar intruder.

"_Leave me alone! Please, go away. Oh no!"_

Caliborn was a pest. A petulant zit planted firmly on the indignant arse of humanity. Roxy often told Calliope that she considered him to be the literal opposite in personality to her, and found herself immensely flattered. For too long had Calliope put up with his insults, crude games, and shitty assassination attempts before she decided one fateful chess game that no. Fuck it. She was done. She was through humoring his juvenile antics! Roxy immediately offered Calliope a place to stay.

That was of no surprise - Roxy was her best friend! And by best friend the author obviously meant they choose the rainbow road in Mario Kart as obvious symbolism for their abundant lesbifriendism. Roxy was also rather lonely since her mother died - the house was incredibly isolated among the trees, without many other humans in sight, and could accommodate at least a family of four.

One thing it would NOT accommodate was buttzits. And yet...

"Hadn't I already mentioned. That I was looking forward to when you were dead? And that I was going to be. The one to do it?"

The way he stopped and started at every fucking clause usually did nothing but stick on Calliope's nerves like a particularly loathsome wart that refused to go away - no matter the ointment used - and constantly interfering with menial tasks when it was least expected. Right now it set her even more on edge. It was comparable to a roller-coaster that moved unpredictably, stopping and starting at the worst times, the more cowardly passengers wishing it would either keep moving or stop entirely. She strained herself to hear any movement in the house between pauses. Nothing.

"Oh, that is such nonsense! It's been years, I find it difficult to believe that even you haven't matured a little. Consider the deed unnecessary - I am already dying, and I am accompanied by a lovely hospice nurse to watch me do so."

Her hand caught on a drawer and she opened it - surely he couldn't see it in this dark! However, she hadn't accounted for the noise. Wood scraped across wood (no homo) and Caliborn's eyes snapped to the source.

'_Oh no, don't come any closer!" _

"Just because every other time I said I was going to kill you. I didn't kill you. Doesn't mean I wasn't going to all along." At this point, Calliope was scrambling the contents of the drawer to find her pistol. But now Caliborn had moved closer into the light, and she could see a rifle, which he appeared to have no trouble holding. There was also blood - and she couldn't tell if it was his. It wasn't his rifle. It was too pink to be his rifle. Her light source wasn't as warm as it could have been.

They both opened fire.


	2. Move Into An Obviously Haunted House

Jade typed frustratedly yet again into her Echidna search engine, for what she thought was the… seventh time today. She went through the usual checklist.

I need/have a flat.

Name: _Jade C. Harley_.

I am: _One person_.

Occupation: _Student_

Email: _gardengnostic _

She was currently sitting at the edge of her "little brother's" bed, fidgeting away. As sunny as it was, she didn't feel like going outside. She felt like smacking a mofo. An inanimate mofo, though. No mofo had recently wronged her, so smacking an innocent mofo would just be kinda mean! Heck, not even an inanimate mofo did anything to her. She heard the door open and shut, so she looked away from her computer.

"Good morning, Jade - Have you had any fortune in finding a place to reside?" That was Mr. Egbert. His voice sounded stern and authoritative - like it belonged on a typewriter. He also constantly smelled like tobacco and shaving cream. Jade smiled.

"No, not yet! I'm not giving up, though. Oh, by the way, where's John?" She shut the lid down a bit to face him. Mr. Egbert adjusted his stern fatherly pipe - a line that should be more commonly seen in pornographic fics, but mysteriously isn't.

"He was attending to his chores when he decapitated a harlequin. I fail to see the allure of deceased joke-tellers and clowns but I will tolerate it. However, what I will not tolerate is the mess he created by doing so. He should be done tidying up any moment now."

Jade didn't really understand their passionate jester warfare. She didn't want to understand their passionate jester warfare.

"You are welcome to stay as long as you need, Harley. John and I already consider you part of our family as it stands."

"I'm flattered! Really it does mean a lot… it's just, unless you want a hole to be blown in the wall I should really find a larger place to stay. One with room outside! The suburbs aren't really the best place for experiments and stuff…"

A few years after her Grandfather died, Jade had been living just fine on her own. But John seemed to get concerned enough to tell his father, who alerted the proper authorities. This lead to child services saying the equivalent of "aw HELL naw" and within a month Jade was sharing a room with John Egbert. While living here had been fun and all, there was no way to practice her marksmanship skills! And she didn't want to conduct experiments with radioactivity in their living room, either. That was a dick move.

"Just note that- Now what the…"  
>This wasn't what Mr. Egbert intended to say. But the smell of cake was beginning to waft into the room. "Waft" meaning assault every unprotected nose in the household with the sweet scent of burned chocolate and failure.<p>

As Mr. Egbert Dad-scampered his ass out of the door, John lad-scampered his ass in.

"Don't you have chores?" Jade questioned, immediately re-opening her computer and picking up where she left off.

"Psh. No way, I'll just get to them later or something," a nerd replied. That nerd being John.

"Hmm…" Her eyes were fixed on her screen. She'd long since gotten used to the Matthew Mcconaughey wall staring at her soul with his (actually okayish) blue eyes and constantly seducing her best friend. Many a time had she walked in on him coming THIS CLOSE to kissing a poster of the guy. Matthew Mcconaughey was more akin to Matthew Mcconaug_nay _for Jad- oh jesus tits was that an AFFORDABLE FLAT WITH A ROOMMATE?

She immediately swooped in on that shit, leaning a bit closer to the screen and-

promptly ducked. A wily pie made of whipped cream (oh how the author wants to call it a creampie) had flown at her face. Daily occurance. _Basic. _

"You're cleaning that, John!"

Jade examined the house on offer. It was cheap. It was suspiciously cheap to rent considering it's large size, high quality, and beautiful view of the secluded woods. It was almost as if the house were tucked inside humanities darkest recesses, with terrible secrets to hide that no mortal could hope to comprehend. A house so pregnant with horrors that it COULDN'T be seen in plain view, within walking distance, because any sensible life form would be drawn away.

Jade reckoned it was pretty.

It was two stories, and heck, she could have afforded to rent it _without _a flatmate. If it hadn't already been claimed. Thankfully, THEY couldn't afford it. It seemed win-win anyway! Jade liked making friends.

She checked other details, specifically contact details, and sent an email to _carcinoGeneticist _


	3. Karkat Embraces His Inner White Person

"For the up-tenth fucking time, my bedroom is not a Goddamn safe haven for your sordid erotica! I don't know what I could have said or done to paint the picture in your mind of beguiling pearly gold-plated gates opening their arms in a welcoming embrace for your salacious literature, but that shit _doesn't fly_."

"Hey kid, _she'll _hear - shove a knife in it would you?"

If someone were to witness this argument, the would be standing in the surprisingly neat, poster-clad bedroom of a young man. A young man currently bickering with an adopted parent over ill-placed porno-mags.

"HAHAHA. No, fuck that noise, I _hope _Mrs. Paint walks in on this debate! It'll be entertainment to rival the likes of _When Harry Met Sally _to watch you backtrack your scurrilous ass into it's state of _Oh no honey- I absolutely do not prostrate myself before scantily-clad card-holding broads, please don't confiscate my beloved dog-candy!_"

"Well first of all, that movie was more riddled with holes than the latest Felt Member."

"Ugh, I don't care abo-"

"Secondly, I've seen some of your lousy rose-tinted flicks and your room to talk is fucking ni-"

Karkat would have retorted with a stream of vaguely repulsive metaphors had Mrs. Paint not entered the room. There was an unspoken agreement regarding her. Basically, don't be a little shit.

"Any luck with finding a room?" Mrs. Paint trilled as she entered the room. Slick kicked a magazine under the bed.

"Uh, yeah actually. It's a house. A two-story house. In the fucking woods so I can hermit myself away from the rest of the blithering shits that pass off as humanity," Karkat replied. "Catch is, it's just slightly out of budget. I have a flatmate, though."

"Like anyone would last a week living with your sour ass," Slick muttered.

"Scotty!" Mrs. Paint exclaimed.

"OH, DO YOU WANT TO MOTHERFUCKING BET ON THAT YOU LICORICE POPPING STAB HAPPY DUNDERFUCK?"

"Karkat!" Mrs. Paint exclaimed. If she had to exclaim _one more time._

__"You wanna talk knives kid, or what? I'll bet my entire collection of them that you don't manage to keep the same flatmate for a week, tops."

Karkat didn't get a lot of time to affirm this, because Mrs. Paint was already dragging Slick out of the room.

Slick had the perfect one liner to squeeze in. Just wait for it.

"Hate to cu- wait for it, kid."

Karkat groaned both internally and externally, pride wounded, patience dashed.

"Hate to... hate... to, fuck, wait-knife, knife to see-"

Even Mrs. Paint was cringing now.

Patient waiting. Well, more like _hurry-up-and-relieve-me-of-my-suffering-you-obtuse-punderfucking-shitnoodle_ waiting.

"SCREW IT! Hate to cut your stupid teenage head off with a really pointy awesome knife you piece of unswanky dickpuddi-"

And he was gone, courtesy of Mrs. Paint.

A normal person wouldn't spend several hours tucked away in his room, arguing on forums about the intricacies on _The Notebook _and comparing/contrasting the elements of that movie with _Chocolat. _

And Karkat was probably about as normal as an errant penis inside an apple inside a duck. Ducks don't consume apples.

But one thing that WAS normal about him was his desire to move the fuck out. Catapult from the nest like a decapitated bird head being used as old timey biological warfare. It wasn't like he didn't have _some _degree of closeness with Mr. Slick, but frankly, taking a gang leader on as a father after having lost his biological, ordinarily crabby father was _weird. _Also, he didn't cotton to the way Mr. Slick carried his knife around everywhere. It was creepy.

Thank God Ms. Mrs. Paint kept him in check. Those _Terrier Fancy Magazines _have been better hidden than ever before, thus saving his eyes from a vicious smuttack. Except, of course, when he took to hiding them in _Karkat's _room.

And holy shit. Slick was about to lose his weird-ass knife collection.


	4. SPLAT SPLAT MOTHERFUCKER

The car ride took about half an hour. That was half an hour of cake puns, groaning at cake puns, weird tobacco smells filling the car, weird _cake _smells filling the car despite there not actually being a _cake _in the car. Jade wondered how that even worked. Was it a phantom cake? The ghost of an ill-bred chocolate cake haunting them from the grave with weak-ass scents designed to make them all hungry?

Because it was working. At least, it was working on Jade. John and Mr. Egbert had long since become accustomed to the aroma of Betty Crocker's stubborn cake mix, and in no way was there anything else significant about that woman in anyway whatsoever. No sir. The only crime Betty Crocker committed was manufacturing ghost cakes and making people vaguely hungry. Luckily, Jade had planned ahead of that! Sitting on her lap and sticking out of the window sat her most favorite tomato plant. She wanted to make a salad later. A chocolate salad ca- NO, damn it.

Now for a poetic spiel about the sights the car passed. It smooth passed rolling hills, thick green trees the color of spinach clustered together, clouds the size of buildings reflecting the pink morning sunrise, blankets of fog, small groups of colorful flowers scattered here and there like spilled m&ms, and a Mc. Donalds.

They did not stop at the Mc. Donalds and honestly it was a fucking travesty.

But they did arrive, ultimately. It was even creepier in person. It just had this air about it. It was a house that looked like sinister activities took place. Maybe someone was murdered by an evil twin. Maybe there were crimes committed once. Maybe every Tuesday morning a dog might come along and pee on the doorstep. Jade was brave enough to find out. That, and she wasn't superstitious. The house itself looked fine - sort of. It was one of those large homes that looked like it could be sort of decaying, but somebody slapped some paint over it and said "she'll be right".

Jade's interest was drawn to the assortment of trees. Like, there was an absolute batshit amount of trees. Probably several acres. It seemed a nice sort of place to take a stroll, plant some seeds, bury a corpse, gather some thoughts, calm down. The usual.

Then there was a loud slamming sound. John had just gotten out of the car. Jade stopped staring idly out of the car window and followed suit, taking care to NOT slam. Because she wasn't a dick.

"Oh man. This is kind of big for a spooky cabin in the woods. Jade it seems sort of dumb to waltz into a suspiciously cheap house surrounded by weird woods with nobody around for miles with only a stranger. What if he turns out to be some sinister demon like in _The Last Exorcism_ or whatever?" John asked, grappling with a large bag of her clothing.

"Cabin? Gosh John don't be so melodramatic! Think of it as like… a cottage. A cottage in the forest!" She flashed a grin toward her friend and relieved him of his burden.

"Jaaade. It's completely isolated and creepy," he flapped his arms, not missing the weight.

"It's tranquil and quaint!"

"Actually, it's not a cottage _or _a cabin," Mr. Egbert interrupted, walking in from behind and adjusting his stern fatherly hat. "It's two stories tall- I don't know where kids are getting their gross architecture misinformation these days."

"You do architecture?" Jade asked.

"No. I do business."

"What kind of business?"

"Fatherly business."  
>"Hahaha. But what do you do?"<br>"Business."

"But what does your _business _do?"

"Business."

Jade pulled a tomato from her plant and threw it at him out of frustration. He side-stepped that, though.

Somebody else got the brunt of that tomato and it sure as fuck was not John.


	5. He Totally Took A Jab At Her Buck Teeth

Jade's hand stung. It stung as if she shoved it into a hornets' nest with an extended middle finger. Of course, she wasn't an idiot, and it didn't sting for that reason.

It stung because she received two of the most intense high-fives man could even receive. A man could skateboard on Jupiter and receive less of an enthusiastic high five, and do you know how big fucking Jupiter is? The gravity there is unreal.

As Jade's prankster gambit skyrocketed up faster than a dick (is there a tally chart for the dick jokes in this fiction yet? because there should be) making its way to a three way, so did her mild guilt. She still giggled though. Mr. Egbert made his way to the car. It was probably the most rational decision anybody had ever actually made so far.

It took Karkat a good few seconds to process what had happened. He had left the building to greet the newcomer, like any chump would, and found himself seeing _red. _Literal _red. _Because there was a tomato and it was all up in face like one of those bumblebees that just kind of hover there for a few seconds, so you flap your arms and run backwards a little to try and avoid it. It becomes an awkward little dance. Your friends are staring at you. You're being judged. Nobody can see the bee. You just break-danced in the school cafeteria you eccentric load of _fuck_.

Except Karkat didn't do an awkward dance-thing out of the way. And that was his downfall. He couldn't get his groove on in time, and now he had juices dripping down his face.

It was a shame too! He had almost gone a _little _bit of time doing or saying anything that could inadvertently piss off the newcomer. The newcomer he would have to share a house with. For an indefinite amount of time. That newcomer.

"Okay, first of all..."

He wiped his face and took the most dramatic deep breath. Jade thought that maybe it was his way of anger management?

"WHAT IN THE LEGITIMATE FUCK WERE YOU ATTEMPTING TO ACCOMPLISH WITH THAT SHITTY LITTLE GAMBIT? _OH, KNOW WHAT SOUNDS LIKE A FUN TIME? MAYBE I WILL BREACH ALL SOCIAL CONVENTIONS AND THROW A BLOODSHITTING PLANT AT THE STRANGER I EXPECT TO LIVE WITH FOR AN UNSPECIFIED ALLOCATION OF TIME, THAT'S NOT A STRAIGHT UP MORONIC THING TO DO, AND MAYBE TONIGHT I'LL EAT BABY FOOD FROM A STRAW TO FURTHER DEMONSTRATE MY GREAT CAPABILITIES. _God DAMN."

Jade was _wrong. _

_And a little lost for words. _John was just about wetting himself with laughter.

"I'm sorry! I was aiming for somebody else…?" She was still holding her plant and her baggage.

"_**Why?**_"

Jade didn't know how exactly to explain that Mr. Egbert was going in obnoxious and unhelpful circles without sounding utterly ridiculous. So she didn't!

"_**And WHY do you have a PLANT just on your person? Do you go around throwing tomatos at any old unsuspecting person!?**_"

Now. That one she _COULD _explain.

"I like plants!"

It was becoming very clear to the both of them that living in that house would have to be a temporary arrangement. Less than a week, tops. Mr. Egbert gestured John back to the car with obscure pipe-wiggles and hat-tipping that only a stern fatherly business man could pull off, and Jade carried all her stuff in. It wasn't actually a lot! Just a few bags. Karkat would have helped, if he weren't still fuming over the tomato incident. And if he didn't already know that he had _no desire _to lug heavy shit around. So he just followed her in.

"Did you claim a room already?" Jade asked upon reaching the hallway, tomato plant coming _dangerously _close to slipping out of her grip. Her eyes were just _slightly _averted, and she held a sheepish expression. Maybe it was Mr. _Egbert _who had the Prankster's Gambit after all.

Karkat's returning expression was completely irrelevant. He still had tomato on his face. It wasn't flattering - his contours looked like shit under the thin film of plant.

"_Yes. _The one by the bathroom."

"Out of curiosity, why that one? It's only like, the second biggest out of three."  
>"Didn't you hear me? It's by the bathroom."<p>

"You're going to hear the sound of my peeing one night," Jade said, making a colon - forward slash expression, "how is that even an advantage? Like… at all?"

"I- What- Okay. I choose _that _one because if you're the kind of person to take several hours locked in there to brush your teeth or whatever - and from the looks of your mouth, you have a _lot _of tooth to brush - I can at least get to the bathroom _first."_

"Oh… Wait did you just-?!"

"NOW If you'll excuse me, I have to _use _said bathroom to wash my fucking face, _thank you."_

He then left. Jade would have stopped him if she hadn't had her arms full of things.

Tit-sprinkling douchelord.


End file.
